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Lex Land/Photo by Jenna LeMieux
One can't help but be intrigued by Lex Land's voice. She deftly navigates fervor and vulnerability in a manner that usually takes a lifetime to cultivate, and yet she's only 22. Since the release of her debut record, Orange Days on Lemon Street, comparisons have already been made with Judy Garland, Billie Holiday, Regina Spektor, Fiona Apple and Liz Phair among others. But Land takes it all in stride.
Last Thursday, LAist sat down with Land at Peet's Coffee in Studio City and spoke with the Southern California native about her whirlwind year, her three tattoos, the craziest experience she's ever had on LA public transportation, and her gig tonight at the Hotel Cafe.
LAist: I really like the title of your album and its reference to the street you lived on in Orange County. Now that you're living in Echo Park, what color would you say your days are now?
Lex Land: My days are always gray. I don't know—it’s just something that keeps coming up. Gray is a recurring theme in my writing. When another color presents itself, I will welcome it wholeheartedly. But for now it's gray. I really don't mind it. Lately I've found that being sad really suits me. I know it sounds kind of silly, because I want to be happy and everything, but I guess I feel more stimulated when I'm sad. I write more and try to distract myself by doing other things.
Speaking of the album, how involved were you in the album artwork, especially the animal artwork on the inside? It almost reminds me of The Wind in the Willows.
My friends and I had this whole grand idea of a story we've been kicking around forever, and that we wanted to present in the artwork. It's kind of like Orpheus going to find his love and bring her back. So in the story, I'm this Alice in Wonderland-type character trying to get this person back and going through all of these levels of hell, meeting these little animal friends along the way.
So we found these girls who run a place called SolArt Gallery, and we asked them to do it. One of their cousins is a muralist in Mexico, so they flew her out to do the design and it turned out better than I could have imagined. So that's where those references came into play—the tree with the heart in it and such.
Lex Land/Photo by Verity Jane Smithvert
I love the 40s feel of "Easy." Did you have that era in mind when you were writing that track? Somewhat. When it comes to the songs I wrote for Orange Days, that was pretty much the first time I felt like I was writing good stuff. I was going through this crazy transition period where I was going through a breakup and I was meeting new people, then miraculously, over the span of a couple of months, I totally figured out what my sound was.
My friends introduced me to a lot of their favorite influences—such as roots music—and that helped to bring out the love I already had for a lot of that stuff. "Easy" and "Sweet" were the first ones that came out because of that.
Reviews of your concerts have said that you employ a unique form of finger picking. When did you first pick up a guitar?
My mom bought me a guitar when I was really young, but I really wasn't interested in it at all. Then I started playing bass and took lessons with one of my older cousins for a while. As soon as he started getting into playing guitar, I did too. I can play guitar now, but I don't consider myself a guitar player. I've just been picking things up as I go along.
Your song "As Much as You Lead" was featured on the TV show Private Practice a while back. More and more, it seems that TV placements have replaced radio airplay as the method through which musicians get their big break. How has it impacted your music?
I think it's still so recent that I haven't fully seen the butterfly effect of it. It's still kind of hard to say. But I have noticed a change in stuff like myspace. I was getting around 200 hits a day, and that was after going on tour and iTunes placement. In the past couple months since the Private Practice thing, it's been in the 500-600s visit-wise, which has been totally unfathomable to me. And now I have fans—people I don’t even know are writing me letters. It's really cool, especially when you feel lonely in a town like LA, to know that you're a part of someone else's life.
You've been touring with Joshua James recently. How did that come about?
I met Joshua through my manager, Shannon. Joshua's kind of like my older brother in the music industry, because he's been a year ahead of me with everything. I was aching to go on the road and I got to join him, which has been so fun.
What was your favorite city on the tour?
I loved Austin, Memphis and Nashville and can't wait to go back. I just loved being in the South in general.
I remember reading somewhere that you wanted to go into musical theater. Do you still dabble in that genre?
Well, I started studying voice and when I was a teenager, I convinced myself I wanted to do musical theater. When I told my vocal teachers that, they said, "Your voice is so big. Why would you want to do musical theater?" because in the classical world, theater is considered tacky.
One day, one of my vocal teachers just said to me, "Listen, your instrument is really big and honestly, to do musical theater, you have to be a size five and really tall." I didn't take it personally but I thought, "It's true. I can't go stand in line with a bunch of girls that look exactly the same." I do miss that part of my life, though—just the etiquette and that kind of refined thing in your head that makes you think about things in a different way.
Orange Days on Lemon Street
You'll be returning to the Hotel Cafe tonight. What do you like best about that venue?It's a really cute place and I like the vibe. I like that everybody's there to actually listen to music. It's more of a community—one that I'm not necessarily a huge part of, but when I play that room, I get the sense that there's something actually happening there.
On your myspace page you have a link to your blog, and your poetry is really absorbing. Have many of those lyrics already been turned into songs?
Well, I just try to write as much as I can, whether it's just journaling or whatever. In the heavier rains of my writing flows and ebbs, I end up writing a lot of poetry. I don't consider it all to be good, but it's a great way to practice. Having a pen in your hand and just writing is a great way of honing your natural voice.
I may be totally off-base here, but have you ever read House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski? Some of your earlier entries—one in particular—reminded me of his book with the color-coded words and the font you used.
Wow, yeah, you're the first person to ever ask me about that.
And then I noticed that another one of your blog entries had the title "Johnny, angry Johnny, this is Jezebel in hell." Was Danielewski's sister, Poe, one of your early musical influences?
My uncle has always been into listening to girls with interesting voices, so he introduced me to Poe. At the time, my uncle was also reading House of Leaves. It looked so cool and even though I was just in high school at the time, I feel it made a big impact on my literary development. I think it really was an influence in how I thought about the structure of words—the way I think about phrasing is different because of that book.
In addition to your music, your artistic vision seems to extend into crafts as well, and from what I've seen on YouTube, you've even ventured into claymation. What kind of projects have you been working on lately?
Well, a lot of technical issues have come up, but I'm trying to make a claymation music video, and what you saw on YouTube was a test. It's all going to be tied into that Orpheus story.
What's been the hardest part about claymation that you might not have expected to be hard?
I tried to make a me and couldn't. It was ridiculous. When I started, the head looked OK—it didn't look too much like me but I was going through the motions and things were progressing. Then I tried to build the body, and as I was trying to get my claymation self to stand on my own, I realized that my entire body had slunk into the bottom half and I was a couple inches shorter. (laughs) So I'm not an expert by any means.
And you make purses, jewelry and other items, too, right?
Yeah, I'm just a craft nerd. I can do a lot of shit. Eventually I want to have a little online store so I can just make my music and make my crafts and not have to have a day job.
Speaking of art and such, I'm fascinated by tattoos and since a couple of yours are peeking out, I have to ask: How many do you have and what do they say?
I have three. This was my first and it says, "Wait in the fire." It's from Jeff Buckley's "Grace."
The other two I got on the same day and they're still pretty fresh. This one says, "Fall in love and fall apart, things will end before they start." It's from a Sufjan Stevens song called "Holland."
The other one was more of a whim and it's probably the line that I've been most obsessed with ever since I read it. It says, "Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances." It's from a poem called, "Meditations at Lagunitas" by Robert Hass. And it is amazing. I don't really find affinity with too many things like that, so when something really sticks in my head like that one absolutely has, I return to it often.
Whatever font you used for your tattoos is gorgeous. What is it?
It's my handwriting, actually.
Wow! You need to create a font out of that.
Yeah, it would also save me a lot of time whenever I have to write letters!
I know you've been living in Southern California all your life. What are some of your favorite places?
I would say one of my favorite eateries is this place called Taco Loco in downtown Laguna Beach. When I was in high school, my best friend and I would sneak out of her house and hang out in downtown Laguna Beach meeting random people, finding cigarettes and going to Taco Loco. I have a sentimental attachment to that.
There's also a place in Laguna Beach called Top of the World that has a little park and hiking trail. On one side you can see the entire valley and on the other side is the ocean. Whenever I go back, it's kind of this re-homing feeling because it feels like I haven't left. It's my little snow globe place.
Lex Land/Photo by Verity Jane Smithvert
I know that for a long time, you lived in LA without a car. Have you found one yet? I have one but it has been sitting at my ex-boyfriend's house for probably five months. It needs some repairs. I have to get it figured out soon because I honestly don't know how I've made it this long without one.
Have you gotten into a comfortable groove with the public transportation system?
Now I feel comfortable, but before that, I was riding on people's good graces. Fortunately, my last boyfriend was a total doll about helping me out with that. Now that I live right off of Sunset, I can catch the same bus to get wherever I need to go. I have to take the subway and stuff, but every venue in LA is pretty much on or near Sunset.
Do you have any advice for people who are trying out public transportation for the first time?
I was really lucky because I had a co-worker who helped me figure it out when I was first trying to find my way around LA. After you start to get into the swing of it, you realize which stations are where and which buses go where. You just need to do it, because if you try to use the planner, sometimes they tell you the most fucked-up roundabout way of getting places.
What's the craziest experience you've had while taking public transportation?
My morning commute involves taking a bus to the subway to another bus. And a couple days ago, the bus I always take didn't come, and it took three rotations until one finally arrived. So I finally got on the bus and it was the most crowded bus ever. We stopped somewhere in front of a hardware store and this guy got on the bus and he was wearing a sweatshirt and really dirty jeans that had a blood spot an inch wide on his leg. Plus he had a can of pepper spray attached to his belt loop and the flap was open—like he had just used it or something.
He stood near the door and suddenly started falling asleep and swaying a bit. Then he woke up with a start and began to lift his sweatshirt—and under his shirt he had this plastic display case containing all these tools that he had obviously just stolen from the hardware store. And I'm thinking, "This is a character!"
He was holding the tool thing in one hand, and then he took his other hand and shoved it all the way down his pants. And by this point I was thinking, "Is he going to pull out a lamp?" But no, he ended up completely fixing himself in front of everybody for an uncomfortably long period of time. He finally decided to sit down and ended up falling asleep. He was in the very front seat next to the door, and he just kept sinking lower and lower in the seat as he fell asleep. This meant that people exiting the bus had to walk around him and press themselves against the other side of the bus in order to get out. Some other crazy stuff happened on the way to the subway station that same trip, but his performance was definitely the craziest thing I'd ever experienced on public transportation.
Wow, that is pretty insane!
I know we're just about out of time, but before we go, I was wondering—have you already started to work on your next album?
I've been writing a lot and I think that we're going to do an EP first. It'll probably be 40s-type stuff, because I've been writing a lot of songs along the lines of "Easy." I was going through this drought this past year but I just started writing recently. Everything I could actually write sounded like old 40s ballads and torch songs. So my producer/manager said, "We should do an EP with your new songs."
I do have other random new songs, but I think I'll save those for the next record. Plus I don't want to use all these 40s songs on my next record because that might pigeonhole me. We just started demoing songs and I can't wait until we start recording. The process will probably take a few months, but I'm excited.
You have quite a few gigs in Southern California this month. Where will you be playing?
I have so much going on in February, and I hope people can make it out. I'll be playing the Hotel Cafe tonight, Saint Rocke in Hermosa Beach tomorrow night, Zoey's on Valentine's Day and the Mint on the 27th.
Thank you for speaking with LAist, Lex!
Lex Land will perform with Joshua James tonight at the Hotel Cafe. To learn more about her music and to view more tour dates, visit www.myspace.com/lexacousticrock.
